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Materialist (Christian) Conservatives
As I noted with some astonishment the other day, I saw one of these bumper stickers on a Lexus SUV in the western suburbs. The message is pretty clear: I am an egregious materialist, but somehow, abstractly, I am also storing up my treasure in heaven. Attachment to wealth and the gauche flaunting of that wealth go hand in hand with being Christian for the people with this bumper sticker. What, I wonder, would Savonarola have to say to these people?
At any rate, for a lot of people, the contradiction would be pretty obvious. This is not just the Joel Osteens offering you your "best life now" and the hacks preaching the "prosperity gospel," who would be bad enough considering how many people they have taken in with their sugar-coated deceptions, but it is a much more casual and apparently widespread sentiment that Christian duty has little or no connection with what we should do with our wealth.
This is entirely a question of what people voluntarily wish to do with their own property. This is a question of cultural habits and the degeneration of a Christian ethic, which is surely as much a part of our cultural decay as is the culture of death. Attachment to material things is somewhat more subtle in its dangers, but it is something to which everyone is prone and therefore more of a constant and present danger for everyone.
I would suggest that we could not have a culture of death if we had not already had a culture that prized the desires of the self. It has been for the alleged benefit and convenience of the self, and for the easing of its obligations to others that men have created a culture of death. If the culture of death stems in part from disobeying the boundaries set by God in protecting the sanctity of life, rampant materialism and a culture that caters to the wants of the self stem from a similar lack of limits and spirit of excess. It comes from the same spirit of autonomy that causes man to look to his own interest and desires, to satisfy his own self-will. They are ultimately theologically linked in their common disorientation of the will towards the self and away from God in disordered relationship with creation and with other men.
It should be incumbent on those Christians and conservatives most keenly aware of the sinful inclination of man's will to guard against such disorder. They should be among the best prepared for guarding against it. But that there seems to be a broad constituency among both Christians and conservatives in this country for entertaining this disordered relationship with possessions should not be much in doubt. However, it will not surprise anyone to learn that this constituency is not new. Thus Russell Kirk (with thanks to reader Randall Dietz for sending me this) on industrialism and conservatism in The Conservative Mind:
Personal loyalties gave way to financial relationships. The wealthy man ceased to be a magistrate and patron; he ceased to be neighbor to the poor man; he became a mass man, very often, with no purpose in life but aggrandizement. He ceased to be concerned because he did not understand conservative norms, which cannot be instilled by mere logic-a man must be steeped in them. The poor man ceased to feel that he had a decent place in the community; he became a social atom, starved for most emotions except envy and ennui, severed from true family life and reduced to mere household life, his old landmarks buried, his old faith dissipated. Industrialism was a harder knock to conservatism than the books of the French egalitarians. To complete the route of traditionalists, in America in impression began to rise to the newly industrial and inquisitive interests are the conservative interest, that conservatism is simply a political argument in defense of large accumulations of private property that expansion centralization and accumulation are the tenants of conservatives. From this confusion, from the popular belief that Hamilton was the founder of American conservatism, the forces of tradition in the United States never have fully escaped.
That there is nothing conservative in the encouragement and enabling of consumption and accumulation should be obvious to all. That this modern grasshopper-like view of property has no necessary connection to the proper defense of the rights of property should be clear. Nowadays, we are confronted with an ideology of development and growth, embodied in Kelo v. New London among other things, that starkly opposes the vision of the accumulators to the vision of the small property holders and which privileges the claims of growth over those of prescriptive right. Unfortunately, the distortion of what conservatism properly is has reached such a point that to restate Kirk's words from over 50 years ago in new form elicits shrieks and howls from the accumulators, their hangers-on and those conservatives too ignorant of their own tradition to know any better.
Daniel Larison | May 17, 2006
Comments
Are these people so dense that they don't understand those bumber stickers are intended for beat-up old Buick station wagons, Dodge minivans, or 1983 Toyota Camrys?
Jason LaLonde | 05/17/06 14:18
http://www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=19852
This is a good sign from this article. Thought that I would include it.
Please consider, that it might be a work car (i.e. for clients). They may have won it. Be careful when judging because you don't know. I know folks who live in very nice houses because they built them for a fraction of the cost to buy retail. They really built them with their own labor. Also, that person might have to drive that car for their job, and feel so uncomfortable that they put the bumper sticker on the car.
Having said that your criticisms are correct. Since you cite Kelo v. New London it brings me to an observation. I know individuals who describe themselves as conservatives but I think they would use that decision to if they could to make money. Also, I know for fact that they voted for tax increases for major public works because it would put those facilities right next to their business. Hence money for them. My question to you are those people really conservatives? I say no.
JohnT | 05/17/06 15:18
I often wonder if it makes a difference if the bumper sticker is on a Hummer or a '67 Buick. Aren't we all, in some way or another, caught up in materialism? I certainly can't afford a Hummer, but my family owns a house, a car, a quite a few books (among other things). Where do we draw the line at accumulation v. need? THere is part of me that believes that even though I try to limit my consumption, any consumption outside of the bare necessities could be considered sinful.
bmj | 05/17/06 15:58
I think a reasonable amount of stuff is fine. Enough for a comfortable exitance during retirement is prudent.
The war on stuff is not the battle. It is the mentality that looks at the hummer and feels somehow inferior, and then makes it their life's work to acquire one. When a young woman has abortion so she can finish college, or promote her career--this is a materialist rationale. A man who pressures or pays for his girlfriend to have an abortion is committing evil. Parents who are so burdened by debt to maintain an aggressive consumptive lifestyle, that they neglect their family's emotional and spiritual wellbeing. All of this is the problem.
If one needs or even wants a good set of tools, then get the best affordable set. Use them to create, or use them along side your children. This seems to me to be balanced.
JohnT | 05/17/06 22:05
Of course it is possible that the fellow in the Lexus SUV is driving a company car (though if it is a company car, what is a bumper sticker doing on it?). There are always possibilities that things are not as they appear. Zacchaeus was dreadfully avaricious, but, as we know, he was also very keen to see the Lord. However, the upshot of the Zacchaeus story was that after he met the Lord he abandoned his avarice.
To one degree or another, yes, we are all caught up in materialism, as this disordered attachment to things reflects the common disorder of our spiritual life that we all share. But there is surely a difference between lapsing into these attachments occasionally or accidentally on the one hand and living a life in which these attachments take an embarrassing pride of place. Certainly, what people in this country consider a necessity is often a luxury for the vast majority of men, and in that sense we all have something to reflect on seriously. What strikes me as excessive even within our own society are those who seem to think that increasing growth of GDP is good in and of itself and should take priority over the personal, humane goods of local life or who seem to think that increasing their purchasing power is their vocation in life. This kind of incessant growth is not progress, and "creative destruction" mostly seals up the sources of creativity in local life to break down all the traditional fabrics of society and make more and more people dependent on the "service providers," to whom in fact we are offering the service and the submission.
It is not a question of a "war on stuff." The "stuff" would not exist in the forms that it does but for the desires of men. All the trinkets and junk for sale at the mall are not themselves the problem--it is the insatiable desire that caused them to be made that is the problem.
Daniel Larison | 05/18/06 12:17
No disagreements from me. Just making sure that we were all on the same page. Right now life is out of balance for many people in my "DEMOGRAPHIC". That word, and "career" make me cringe.
If you have little ones you get yanked in so many directions it is difficult to keep balance. My thinking is while we have to survive in this world, the ideal life is one focused on God.
JohnT | 05/18/06 15:41
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